Officials concede there is no telling how many people have been trafficked into Texas and made slaves, but the foreign victims generally come from Mexico, Central America and Asia.

3. No way to tally victims:

Officials concede there is no telling how many people have been trafficked into Texas and made slaves, but the foreign victims generally come from Mexico, Central America and Asia.

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Houston Chronicle

Image 5 of 16

4. Shocking depth:

"The depth and breadth of the different subtypes of human trafficking are shocking," said Bradley Myles, head of the Washington D.C.-based Polaris Project, which runs a trafficking hotline. "In Houston, for example, we've seen reported cases of trafficking in brothels, door to door sales crews, domestic work and in street-based commercial sex."

"It is absolutely modern day slavery," said Shauna Dunlap, spokeswoman for the FBI's Houston Division. "These people are being forced into labor or prostitution against their will. "They end up in bars, nail salons, restaurants, massage parlors, private homes and countless other places.”

Brian Moskowitz, head of Homeland Security Investigation’s Houston Division, said that one of the greatest challenges of trafficking is that victims blend in with the rest of the city. "This is hidden in plain sight," he said. "We can only see what we can see."

The average age at which girls first become victims of prostitution is 12 to 14, according to one study, notes the Texas Department of Public Safety.Stilettos, a cell phone and other belongings sit on the table of a Houston cantina raided by authorities for suspected ties to human trafficking, sex trafficking and related-prostitution.

Members and associates of multiple gangs have been reported to be involved in sex trafficking operations in Texas, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. “These include Barrio Azteca, Black Gangster Disciples, Bloods, Crips, Mara Salvatrucha, Sureños, and Tango Blast. Gangs and gang members are attracted to the lucrative nature of this activity due to the potential for large and renewable profits and the perceived lower risk of detection,” notes a DPS report.

Mexican cartels facilitate, control, or benefit from nearly all human smuggling activity along the Texas-Mexico border, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

11. Cartel ties:

Mexican cartels facilitate, control, or benefit from nearly all human smuggling activity along the Texas-Mexico border, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Photo: Cody Duty, Houston Chronicle

Image 12 of 16

13. Some victims start out willingly:

“In some cases, the victims of sex trafficking initially voluntarily and willingly travel with and engage in prostitution for a trafficker, but are eventually forced to continue working against their will, held captive, and have their access to food, friends, and family restricted by the trafficker,” according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Approximately 100,000 children are estimated to be in the sex trade in the United
States each year, according to the Polaris Project, a US nongovernmental organization
that studies human trafficking.13 In 2013, Texas ranked second in the nation with 2,236
incoming tips (calls, emails, tip forms) received by the Polaris Project’s National Human
Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) for human trafficking tips.

Cheryl Briggs, 53, a former trafficking victim and founder of My Daughter's Home, a facility in the greater Houston area dedicated to helping women who have been trafficked for sex, shows the six-bed facilit.

Many traffickers physically and sexually assault their victims and threaten to assault or kill their family members if the victims attempt to escape. In some cases, they deliberately drug them, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Investigator Charles Cornelius points to an escape hatch in the fence surrounding Houston's La Costellita cantina, which was linked to sex trafficking,

Federal agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 16 people late Thursday night in a bust of a northeast Houston human stash house.

ICE spokesman Greg Palmore said the suspects included one suspected human smuggler and 15 undocumented people from El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Honduras. They were being held in the 9800 block of Gillman St.

The stash house is a place where human smuggling operations hide the people they transport from the U.S./Mexico border to more northern cities. According to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 90 percent of people seeking to make undocumented entry into the country pay human smugglers—a steep rise from decades past.

A July report by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review revealed that American citizens, often undereducated and underemployed, provide the majority of human smuggling services, raking in thousands of dollars to transport people covertly from the border region.

Palmore said it was too early to reveal details or affiliations of the one suspected smuggler caught. The immigrants will be taken to an ICE facility where they will fed, medically examined and interviewed to determine their future.

"It's not as clean cut as to say all these individuals will be returned to their countries," Palmore said. "There's a process that takes place."

The Houston Police Department initially responded to a call about loud noise at a neighboring property, said HPD spokesman John Cannon. Many residences were vacant in the area.

When officers saw two men standing in the garage entry of 9847 Gillman, they two men ran and were soon apprehended by officers, who became suspicious of the house. They swept the house, room by room, yelling English and Spanish commands for anyone listening to come out. Eleven women and three men emerged from hiding.

When officers confirmed they'd stepped into a human smuggling operation, they notified ICE.

Palmore said ICE regularly encounters human stash houses in Houston, recognized as a national hub for human smuggling, though less frequently than the agency has seen in the past.